After six months of work, I finally have all the pieces together to call the beast a modular synthesizer. Last critical piece was the VCF/VCA from Analog Synth for the 21st Century.

Still knobless--I need to take it out and fix the resonance pot, which of course i wired backwards .

Main other bit of maintenance is I need to work on making the power harness more studly; I have been using the pressure fit rather than soldered MTA connectors, and it was causing me grief this evening.

Now it's on to less crucial components, like a second VCO, a buffered multiple, an LFO (probably the new TH one), the S&H and Noise (I think I can get them behind a single panel) and then 3 more units left to play with...and more than enough additional PCBs to fill them. .

BTW in the middle section I made two sets of inputs that are switchable between the VCF or the VCA. I couldn't fit the basic set of controls in 2u wide, and this 3u wide was going to waste space...plus I needed more inputs in places to be able to implement (eventually) the patchover scheme to play with. Not going to normal it, but I can connect it up regardless.

Hi fellow synth heads. I'm a "newbie" on this site, but been lurking for quite some time here. This site has truly helped when I've hit a wall with builds.

Just wanted to show you guys my first proper synth build.

I've been building synth stuff to breadboards for quite some time and decided to put best bits in one case.

I've always been fan of bass synths and my goal is to build fat analog mono bass/lead synth but with wider patching possibilities than my current gear. I chose to use korgs MS20 styling because it already has a patching board, but I wanted to make mine bit bigger.

Name is bit cheesy but couldn't come up with better name

Synth has two FARM VCO 2 oscillators based on Motohiko Takedas designs. Both OSCs have MC202(SH101) sub oscillators for square waves.

Next to oscillators there is 4CH audio/cv mixer and next to that a place for two MS20 filters. At the moment there is just one in place. Envelope generators are based on Renes 555 times envelope circuits.

There is two LFO's both putting out triangle and square wave and ring modulator thats based on 4011, much like on MS20.

Noise generator has white and pink noise. VCA is based on Motohiko Takedas design.

All individual parts have own input and outputs, so nothing is hardwired on inside. In the future, all parts of this synth can be used with modular set up.

Here are couple pics.

I pondered a while if I post this clip or not. But its always nice to hear DIY synhts instead of just looking pictures so here goes nothing.

Nothing fancy on this short demo clip, mostly out of tune square oscillators competing over each other. Oscs are mostly playing dry, I didn't want to use filter because there was some clicking/clitching sound from envelope generator. I recorded this in hurry so there is line noise from other synths and overall levels are too hot so there is some clipping.

1 sound : two squares with slight detune playing Prodigys Everybody in the place melody.

2 sound : Arpeggiated squares, some ADSR tweaking

3 sound : Two PWM squares on octave lower, delay from Ableton Live

4 sound : Two Squares, first just one Osc second Osc rises slowly

5 sound : Acidic pattern. Just one Saw wave from Osc one, through minimoog filter, delay from Ableton live

well, its not a synth, but in the absence of me building anything remotely synthesizer related in the past couple of months, i present my cycle computer,
its not for riding on the roads, its for at home on the trainer
it has mph, cadence, route programming, route display, potentiometer based selection, and automatic trainer adjustment through a servo.
all on one arduino chip, incredible stuff.

Here's my second Teezer build. I built one of these when the PCBs first became available from Bridechamber, and although it took a ton of debugging (Thanks Ian!) it eventually worked, for a while. A small electrical accident knocked it out of commission however, and it's still in the process of being resurrected.

The first one had really cool 10 turn pots, although I didn't really like them that much, so this time around I turned to my current fascination with big knobs for the pots that can benefit from extra care in setting.

This one also uses detachable interconnects for the panel wiring - for years I've been Mr. Macho about hard wiring everything - "it's going to work first time every time dammit, why bother with interconnects?". This was just a test to see if it might be a good idea for future builds, and considering the debugging process this time around, I'll probably be doing this more often.

Anyway, I was super meticulous about getting all the right parts, super careful about all the solders, etc, and was fully expecting it to just work, first time, you know. Like usual.

It didn't. The CA3280 got really hot, and 2 of the diodes blew out. Yikes. I posted for help in the TZFM VCO thread here, and Dave Brown came to my rescue - via a series of emails he walked me through testing everything around the affected parts, and eventually was able to determine that I must have just had a bad CA3280. So I took the one out of my old teezer, not really expecting it to work, but it fired right up, and everything works perfectly now! Thanks Dave!

Currently I have 65 modules in 6 cabinets. One of these, the MOTM 650 was bought premade. And there's my first teezer which is currently disassembled for repair. And I've built a small pile of modules for other people, and sold a few dupe modules if I improved them enough that the old one drove me crazy.

So I'm not nearly in record breaking territory yet. I'm pretty sure both Pugix and Dave Brown have more modules than I do, and probably quite a few others - I really only pay attention to motm format systems, I'm sure there are some much larger euro systems and such. Oh, and my wife wouldn't let me keep this in the living room - it's all in a tiny spare bedroom I use as an office/studio. Although the living room is full of antiques - if this was in there it might start to look like the Zimmer studio - hmmmm...

I think the picture below is about 50 modules - I've since added on 3 of the cheapo Winkels cabinets - at this point I had a small pile of modules on shelves, being rotated in and out depending on my needs - this is from November of last year (2011) -

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